I currently own an old Olympus D340-L which uses Smartmedia. I'm in the market for a new, modern camera, and one of my main concerns is the ability to take consecutive pictures in an extremely short time. Basically, my current camera takes about 3 seconds to save a photo to the Smartmedia card. Thus, I have to wait about 3 seconds before I can take another picture. Sure, it has a rapid-shot mode where it will take 10 frames in the span of about 3 seconds, but I have no control over focus, lighting, etc.

My question: Does the speed of the media card play a significant role in photo-processing time, the minimum duration between presses of the shutter button? I know that Compact Flash format has a "high-speed" version of that media, and I think Smartmedia has as well. When I get a new camera, would it help to get a camera that can benefit from high-speed media?

Are there camera models that you'd recommend? The two other things I'm looking for are MP and zoom: I'm looking for at least 4x optical and 4MP.

Most newer cameras will incorporate a buffer for shooting in jpegs so you shouldn't be seing the delay as in your old camera. The internal buffer will buffer up jpeg shots as it writes to the slower flash. In tiff/raw is when this buffer fill up right after the 1st shot, and then you have to wait...

In term of media type the MemoryStick should be the slowest in theory since it's only 1 bit per clock, next Smartmedia @ 4/8-bits per cycle and then 8/16-bits CF cards the fatest. But all this depends on the camera implementation and how fast they shift theses data in and out from the various flash cards (ie one camera will be different from another).

Just as a friendly hint, don't get an Olympus E-10 or E-20 :!: , I did and found that the write times (even for jpegs) are truly awful, I had read on Steve's review that it was slow but I never expected it to as slow as it was
I bought a Minolta Dimage 7Hi because of this :P

I'm seriously considering the Dimage 7i because of the zoom and megapixel potential, but I need to know about the speed issue, too. You say it's fine in that area, especially when compared to Olympus? How many versions of the Dimage 7 are there? I've heard of the original, the 7i, and your 7Hi...

I visited the Sandisk and Lexar sites and learned that 12x CF is enough for my purposes...which is good. I'm really leaning toward getting a camera that can use this media...